Texas voter ID law can go into effect, appeals court rules

[Eugene]

Source: CNN

(CNN) — Texas will be allowed to enforce its voter ID law in the upcoming elections, a federal appeals court ruled.

In the 2-1 decision, a panel of the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans overturned a lower court ruling that had blocked the law last year after concluding the state acted with intent to discriminate against minorities.

Friday's ruling is a major victory for Texas on the issue of voting rights.

The state's voter ID law has been under legal challenge for years.

-snip-

By Nicole Chavez, CNN
Updated 0858 GMT (1658 HKT) April 28, 2018


Read more: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/04/28/politics/texas-voter-id-law/index.html

[lostnfound]

1. "major victory for Texas on the issue of voting rights"

major victory for Texas on the issue of voting rights.
Nice spin, framing. A victory for Texas voting rights? Bull.
:grrr:

[LBM20]

2. Don't growl. Just tell people to bring an ID card or driver's license to the polls.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

4. Since you think it is that simple, you need to study up on how this issue really suppresses the vote

[joshdawg]

6. Agree with you.

This is voter suppression plain and simple and the republicans love it. The fewer people who can vote means a sure fire republican win.

Remember the days when all one needed was a water bill to vote? I do.

Then the republicans gained power and all went to hell in a hand basket.

[samnsara]

7. i usually have this one me at all times anyway

[Amimnoch]

9. What great privilage you have.

Simple for you, not so simple for those who are disenfranchised of their constitutional right to vote by these laws.

https://www.aclu.org/other/oppose-voter-id-legislation-fact-sheet

Millions of Americans Lack ID. 11% of U.S. citizens – or more than 21 million Americans – do not have government-issued photo identification.1
Obtaining ID Costs Money. Even if ID is offered for free, voters must incur numerous costs (such as paying for birth certificates) to apply for a government-issued ID.
Underlying documents required to obtain ID cost money, a significant expense for lower-income Americans. The combined cost of document fees, travel expenses and waiting time are estimated to range from $75 to $175.2
The travel required is often a major burden on people with disabilities, the elderly, or those in rural areas without access to a car or public transportation. In Texas, some people in rural areas must travel approximately 170 miles to reach the nearest ID office.3
Voter ID Laws Reduce Voter Turnout. A 2014 GAO study found that strict photo ID laws reduce turnout by 2-3 percentage points,4 which can translate into tens of thousands of votes lost in a single state.5

I’m going to assume that you weren’t intentionally so insensitive, but your comment is no different than saying to a homeless person “just tell people to go out and get a job.”

[Igel]

12. Yeah, I don't believe that number.

After a fairly recent election--2014, I think it was--somebody dug into the weeds on this issue. The news what that you needed ID to vote, and the follow-up showed that a lot of minorities (people in general, actually) didn't vote because they were sure they didn't have IDs. That was important news--all the voters disenfranchised by the ID law.

So researchers repeated the survey and after getting the "Did you not go to the polls because you lacked the required ID, such as ____ or _____" response they then went down a list of government-issued photo IDs, asking if the person had a driver's license, passport, non-driver's license ID, etc., etc., etc. Most of those who responded that they lacked "government-issued photo IDs" did, in fact, have a government-issued photo ID. They didn't have the two listed, or didn't understand the question, or their attention lapsed, or something else.

In other words, they were regularly mis-answering a question, and it took the researcher's openly questioning those answers and verifying in detail each option for the mis-answerer to become clear on the point.

Notice that one political upside was all the warnings about how bad the law was actually disenfranchised the low-attention, low-education voters that advocates were trying to protect.


I've never understood how people can function in a society with cars, banking, Social Security, without a valid ID. (Although it turns out a lot of those not having valid IDs are people whose married name isn't the same as their current ID. My wife was like that for 15 years, and you know, she voted: Married as Mrs. Igel, she remained Ms. Aardvark with that for employment, taxes, everything really. Now her (re)marriage license is part of her basic documents, with her birth certificate. The legal name change was really when she replaced her government-issued photo ID, not before.)

[Amimnoch]

15. Well, you are incorrect.

I have 2 relatives that have been unable to vote since Louisiana’s change in voter ID laws in the late 1990’s.

My grandmother and one of her sisters has been unable to get a Drivers License, US Passport, or State ID card required to vote in elections.

Neither knows how to drive, and has no interest in getting a drivers license. Neither would have the required documentation anyway.

Neither is able to get a state ID card because neither has the pre-requisite primary form of ID required to get it. They were both delivered by mid-wives back in the 1920’s, and have no birth certificate. They obviously don’t have the passport (for reasons stated below). They both don’t have a permanant resident card (since they were born in Louisiana).

To get a passport required a birth certificate or a naturalization certificate. Again, no birth certificate no passport.

Luckily they got their Social security numbers issued in the days following the New Deal, back then all that was required was to ask for it. The ID requirements for issuance of a SSN didn’t come until much later. Unfortunately SSN card isn’t considered a primary form of ID for getting a passport or Louisiana state ID.

This problem expands for people of color since for many of those born before the end of the Jim Crow era, especially those born in rural areas, a birth in a hospital that could issue a birth certificate wasn’t even an option available to them.

Eventually, time will naturally eliminate these problems as those born in such conditions are becomming fewer and fewer in number, but these laws DO disenfranchise people right now, and they do disproportionately affect the elderly and minorities.

You can’t make the requirements to get ID’s impossible to a block of people, then refuse them their Constitutional right to vote.

[mopinko]

19. my mom didnt have a birth cert, but got a passport using

her baptismal certificate.
dont know if you can still do that, but she did.

[olegramps]

14. Hopefully you will become more informed on the issues envolved.

As a veteran who gladly served our nation, I am appalled by the very thought that a veteran could be turned away from the poll because they don't have the Gestapo's necessary and very arbitrary ID. This is an issue of voter suppression which you apparently neglect to consider. I can only hope that the young people of this nation awaken to the threat that the Republican Party is to our Constitution. The Republicans have put a man in the White House who has absolutely no knowledge or respect for the office he occupies. They fell for the same lies that put Hitler in power.

[moriah]

16. For me, as just a person who hss been married, to get the new ID I had to get..

... my birth certificate
... my vehicle registration
.... my social security card
... my marriage license
... my personal property tax bill
... my auto insurance bill

-------

Now what if you don't drive? If you live with roommates and all the bills are in their name?

No, it's not that fucking easy.

[lostnfound]

21. horror stories of poor people who spent hundreds and made several trips to get ID without success

People with mismatches of middle initials, who don’t have cars and take buses, who work two jobs and have trouble taking time to go get an ID... LTOS of people have challenges getting an ID

https://www.thenation.com/article/a-black-man-brought-3-forms-of-id-to-the-polls-in-wisconsin-he-still-couldnt-vote/

Holloway, a 58-year-old African-American man, moved from Illinois to Wisconsin in 2008 and voted without problems, until Wisconsin passed its voter-ID law in 2011. “I never miss voting,” he said. He brought his expired Illinois photo ID, birth certificate, and Social Security card to get a photo ID for voting, but the DMV in Milwaukee rejected his application because the name on his birth certificate read “Eddie Junior Holloway,” the result of a clerical error when it was issued.

Holloway, who worked as a cook in Illinois but is now unemployed and disabled, living with his family in Milwaukee, got a ride downtown to the Vital Records System to try to fix his birth certificate. Vital Records said it would cost between $400 and $600, which Holloway could not afford.

He then called the Illinois Vital Records Division, who said he had to personally come to Springfield, the state capital, to amend his birth certificate. So Holloway bought a $180 round-trip bus ticket and traveled four hours back to his home state. Once in Springfield, the division said it needed a copy of his high-school and vaccination records. Holloway went to his hometown of Decatur to get his school records, paying $20 to his friend for gas money, but after returning to Springfield, Vital Records said it needed his full Social Security statement, which he didn’t have. He also visited the Illinois DMV, but had no luck there either. He left Illinois without getting the documents he needed to vote in Wisconsin.

Back in Milwaukee, Holloway got two copies of his Social Security statement and asked Illinois Vital Records if he could e-mail or fax them over. They said he’d have to appear in person again. But Holloway didn’t have the money to make another trip to Illinois and gave up trying to get a voter ID. He’d spent $200, visited two states, and made seven trips to different public institutions, but still couldn’t vote in Wisconsin. (This story is based on Holloway’s testimony in a 2013 federal district court trial challenging Wisconsin’s voter-ID law.)

[beachbum bob]

3. all the is needed is to have the proper IDs as proscribed and the local

democratic county people should be working with the public to be sure to have them get them. We know the rules, we just need to be sure the voters are covered

[moriah]

17. Are you going to help them get..

... their birth certificate
... their vehicle registration
.... their social security card
... their marriage license, perhaps multiple marriage and divorce decrees to link birth name with name on SSN
... their personal property tax bill
... their auto insurance bill

....etc?

[turbinetree]

5. Texas..........................

https://www.brennancenter.org/issues/restricting-vote

https://www.brennancenter.org/new-voting-restrictions-america


You can show a fucking gun license and mosey on in and vote, but if you have school ID, your screwed


Texas
New restriction(s) in place for 2016: Photo ID required if a voter has one, but an alternative will be available for those who have a reasonable impediment to obtaining ID.

Click here to see the types of ID required under Texas’s law.

Restriction(s) in place for 2012 presidential election: Curbed voter registration drives.

Background: In 2012, a federal court blocked the 2011 photo ID law under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The state then implemented the requirement after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted Section 5 in 2013, and a photo ID was required to vote for the first time in a federal election in 2014.

In July 2016, the full Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the strict photo ID law discriminates against minority voters, and therefore cannot be enforced against those who lack ID. In August 2016, a federal court approved an agreement that will allow voters with an obstacle to obtaining photo ID to cast a regular ballot in November 2016 after showing one of a much larger number of IDs and signing a declaration. In June 2017, Texas passed another voter ID bill described by the attorney general as a response to a court’s blocking of the state’s previous strict voter ID law. In August 2017, a federal district court blocked enforcement of the new law.

A Republican-controlled legislature passed the restriction on voter registration drives and the strict photo ID law in 2011, and both were signed by a GOP governor.


https://www.brennancenter.org/new-voting-restrictions-america




So yes the United States Supreme Court under the fucking leadership of one John Roberts is a hypocrite when it comes to voting.....................his band of equality under the rule of law gutting the Civil Right Act of 1965................doesn't mean much and should be Impeached


Immigrants died in wars to let others vote...................Roberts and his right wing court and right wing Texas

[Igel]

13. Yes, that's true. CWP vs school ID, CWP wins.

One's government issued and based on your birth certificate or a document based on your birth certificate. One's not.

One's got anti-counterfeiting measures built into it. One doesn't.

My student IDs never really had my full name, nobody needed my BC, and even when they included my SSN they never inspected any documents to verify that my SSN wasn't what I claimed. They're also fairly easy to counterfeit. Mine were often issued by students who had access to large packages of the blank cards. If they wanted to swipe 50 of them, no problem.

[samnsara]

8. all states need to go to all mail in ballots. Then ALL of this shit will go away.

[OnDoutside]

10. Here in Ireland and I believe the UK too, all registered voters get a

Polling card in the mail. Once you go along on polling day, normally the polling/voting card is enough, but everyone is warned that you must bring some form of photo ID with you. It varies from polling station to polling station.

Let's face it, if it wasn't this, Republicans would think up some other scheme to suppress the vote, but where they get away with this, I'd love if Democratic backers funded campaigns to get as many people acceptable photo ID as possible. Don't get odd, get even !

[mackdaddy]

11. My dad is now in a nursing home.

His back has deteriorated to the point he can no longer walk or get out of bed on his own.

His mind in just fine though. And he watches a lot of news every day so he is up on current events. (Not Fox though, like I said his mind is fine.)

But his drivers license just expired, and he can not renew it. He has to be taken to see his specialist doctors by a medical transport company. Do the Republicans expect him to have the ambulance take him to the DMV to renew his ID?

You have to have a copy of your ID to even vote by absentee here.

I is amazing how many people have absolutely no compassion or capability of seeing others situations. "I have to have my Drivers License, so what is the problem?" Well, I put the most awful curse on you I can think of: I hope you have to go through what my dad has gone through in the last six months!

[Jedi Guy]

18. I don't think it's a lack of compassion so much as an inability to understand how someone has no ID.

I find it hard to imagine simply because I regularly walk around with five forms of photo ID on me at all times: Ontario driver's license, Arizona driver's license, Canadian permanent resident card, US passport card, and Ontario health card. My passport is at home in my lockbox, but accessible. To me, that's just normal.

In a way, photo ID is like air. Most people never even think about it until they don't have it. I've heard horror stories of people whose ID has been lost or stolen having to jump through umpty-ump crazy hoops to prove their identity in order to get replacement cards.

Unfortunately, a lot of the time it's hard to sympathize or empathize with the plight of another person when you can't imagine finding yourself in that situation. To those of us who pay attention, these laws are plainly a ploy to suppress the vote, since we know that the GOP is trying to solve a "problem" that doesn't exist. It's cynical in the extreme.

[El Shaman]

20. Voting Rights,

perhaps to the Texas White Nationalist party ( AKA the 3Ks.